54 Questions to Ask about your Biostimulant or Biopesticide

I don’t think anybody really has to be convinced that biologicals are vastly complex and can be extremely difficult (and frustrating) to research.

I’ve compiled a list of (over) 54 questions to ask yourself about your biostimulant or bio pesticide to start getting your research juices flowing and potentially identify what you might already know about your product, and what you need to spend some time and research dollars further investigating.

These are in no particular order and it’s certainly not exhaustive, but they are questions I frequently ask when working with my clients. I might be a bit crazy for giving away some of my secret sauce, but I’m a believer in open access to knowledge, so I hope this helps you as you try to figure out where you are with your product R&D and where you need to go.

As always, if you need some assistance or would like to explore ways to answer these questions, please feel free to book a free call with me here and I would be happy to help you move your biological product R&D along.

So without further adieu, here are a bunch of questions to ask yourself about your biostimulant or biopesticide:

• Is your product absorbed or taken up by the plant? How do you know? How did you measure that?

• Is your product translocated within the plant?

• Does your product require a surfactant and/or adjuvant for efficacy?

• How long does it take your product to be absorbed by the plant if it is taken up?

• Where does it go in the plant if absorbed? How does it get there? How long does it stay there?

• Does your product stress the plant?

• Is your product phytotoxic? Have you checked high rates for phytotoxicity? Have you checked for phytotoxicity in more sensitive plant species?

• Is the localized cell damage you might see with your product phytotoxicity or a hypersensitive response?

• Does your product prime the plant for abiotic stress?

• If your product primes the plant for abiotic stress, what kind of stress does that include? (Drought, heat, flooding, freezing, salinity, nutrient deficiencies, physical damage from hail or other weather events, herbicide drift recovery, etc.)

• What is the mechanism of abiotic stress resistance priming? What does it bind to and how does initiation of that trigger a physiological resistance/tolerance/recovery to abiotic stress?

• Is your product helping with stress resistance? How do you know? What have you measured to show that?

• Is your product helping with stress tolerance? Is the plant simply outgrowing the stress or is stress evident but not yield limiting? How do you know? What have you measured to show that?

• Is your product helping with stress recovery? How do plants primed with your product recover from abiotic stress conditions (such as drought or flooding) in comparison to other stressed plants without your product? How does the recovered state of the treated plants compare to non-stressed plants?

• Is your product priming for disease resistance?

• What kind of defense priming does your product elicit? (SAR, iSR, PTI, ETI?)

• Is defense priming systemic or localized?

• What types of pathogens does your product elicit resistance to? Necrotrophic? Biotrophic? Hemibiotrophic?

• Is there direct contact efficacy on pathogen control with your product?

• How does your product or response to your product mitigate disease? Does is reduce instance of infection? Does is slow the pathogen lifecycle? Does it interrupt pathogen colonization? Is it directly antimicrobial or elicit production of plant defense compounds that are directly anti microbial?

• How long does the antimicrobial effect or resistance last?

• At what growth stage is the induced defense response most effective in your crop? Is it different for different crops?

• How does the timing of product effectiveness align with peak points of yield-limiting disease pressure?

• Does your product elicit defense mechanisms that give incomplete or complete resistance?

• Is the resistance elicited from your product broad spectrum or pathogen species-specific?

• Does your product elicit defense responses that are redundant to resistance gene stacks in your target crop and crop genotype? Or does it provide additional resistance?

• Is there a yield drag from eliciting the defense responses?

• Is there a rate-dependent effect on disease resistance and strength of that resistance?

• How long before disease pressure can you apply the product and maintain effective resistance?

• How do the induced defense responses from your product effect native microbiomes above and below ground? Are plant exudates changed?

• Does your product elicit the release of anti-herbivory compounds?

• Does your product affect plant hormone signaling? Which ones? How are they affected?

• If it does affect hormone signaling, how does this effect change crop physiology?

• Are there off-target effects of your product on plant metabolism, growth and development, or reproduction?

• Are there epigenentic effects of your product that can be seen in long-season crops, perennials, or in the next generation of seeds?

• Does your product affect the rate of development? (Ie- earlier flowering, rooting, ripening, senescence, etc.)

• Does your product affect yield? How? What is the yield-limiting factor that your product is affecting?

• Does your product affect yield quality?

• Is your product helpful for post-harvest diseases?

• Does your product affect nutrient uptake?

• Nutrient availability?

• Nutrient assimilation?

• Nutrient use efficiency? How do you know?

• Which nutrients? Does it work on many?

• Does your product affect chlorophyll production?

• Does it affect chlorophyll degradation?

• Does it affect photosynthetic efficiency?

• Does it affect stomatal density or stomatal conductance?

• Does your product affect water uptake? Water use? Water use efficiency? Water transport?

• Does your product elicit production of osmolytes that assist in water deficient conditions?

• Does your product affect plant metabolism? Which parts? Respiration? Oxidative phosphorylation? Glycolysis? TCA cycle? Starch:sucrose metabolism? Phloem loading? Sink-source relationships?

• Does your product affect plant structure? Root structure? Stabilizing roots? Stem diameter? Stem strength? Node length?

• Does your product affect germination rates?

• Does your product affect seedling establishment and stand?

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